by Joe McKinney
‘You okay, John?’ Elizabeth asked, disturbing him.
‘I’m fine,’ he replied, almost managing a smile. ‘I was just looking out there. Look at it, Liz. The whole bloody world’s in ruins.’
Elizabeth leant against the window. He was right. For as far as she could see the world was dead, drained of all colour and life. Apart from the bodies in the streets, nothing moved. From this height they could see for miles into the distance, and the scale of what had happened around them was humbling. It was soul-destroying.
‘Much happening out there?’ Nick asked as he joined them. He’d been sitting on his own but preferred the company of others.
‘Not a lot,’ John answered.
‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that,’ Elizabeth said, her face still pressed hard against the glass. She’d diverted her attention away from the horizon to the more immediate area directly below. ‘Have you seen what we’ve done?’
Nick peered down. The largest crowd of bodies that any of them had yet seen had gathered around the entrance to the building and were pushing their way in through the huge hole the survivors had made with the bus last night. ‘Bloody hell,’ he said.
Concerned, John stood up and looked down. The sight of the massive gathering made his legs weaken. His mouth suddenly dry, he swallowed hard and looked around for Barry.
‘What’s the problem?’ Barry asked, walking over to the others. John pointed and Barry looked down. ‘Christ almighty.’
‘They can’t get up here, can they?’ Nick asked.
‘Of course not,’ Elizabeth said quickly. Barry was less confident.
‘I can’t see why not,’ he said. ‘If enough of them keep pushing forward from behind, my guess is the furthest forward will start climbing eventually.’
‘But they won’t get up here. We struggled to get up, so surely they won’t be able to…’
‘This place has one main staircase right in the middle of the building,’ he explained, still staring deep into the vast crowd below. ‘There are a couple of fire escapes, but they’re blocked off as far as I know. To be honest, I didn’t look into security too deeply when I got here. There didn’t seem to be any need when the place still had a front door.’
‘So what are you saying?’ Elizabeth pressed.
‘I’m saying that if there’s enough of them and they keep coming, who knows what they’ll be able to do. Give them enough time and there’s every chance they’ll manage to get up here.’
‘But we can get out if we need to?’
‘Well, I think we’ll be able to get down no problem,’ Barry said, ‘but what we do once we’re down there is anyone’s guess. Thanks to you lot the building’s surrounded and I can’t see an obvious way out.’
‘Let’s all keep calm and try and get things into perspective,’ John said quietly, doing his best to prevent panic from spreading. ‘The chances of them getting to us are slim and we’re so high up here that they’ll probably disappear long before they even get close.’
‘You reckon?’ Nick said. ‘There doesn’t seem to be much else going on in town this morning, does there? Looks like we’re the main attraction.’
Barry, Elizabeth, Nick and John stood side by side at the window and stared down. The streets below were filled with grey, staggering bodies and in the absence of any other distraction, the whole damn rotting mass seemed to be converging on the hotel. There were already thousands of them down there, and thousands more were dangerously close.
DAY NINE
THE GARDEN SHED
Lester Prescott thrives on order and uniformity. His pristine home is situated in a relatively well-to-do residential area. He is well respected socially and is the most accurate and productive accountant ever to have been employed by Ashcroft, Jenkins and Harman. Lester Prescott thinks in black and white. Show a child a cardboard box and they’ll turn it into a spaceship, a plane, a car, a robot suit or whatever else their uninhibited imaginations can create. As far as Lester Prescott is concerned, however, a cardboard box is, was and only ever could be a cardboard box.
Lester often finds it difficult to connect with people. Although he tries hard, over the years he has proved himself to be a boring and dull husband, an unimaginative lover and, perhaps worst of all, a disappointment as a father. People’s emotions and reactions cannot be governed by procedures, and that frustrates him. Their lives are never as clear cut and predictable as the columns of figures he can interpret with ease. He struggles with spontaneity.
Lester and his long-suffering wife, Janice, have been married for twenty-seven years. For twenty-five of those years they’ve lived in the same semi-detached house a third of the way down Baker Road West. Twenty-three years ago next month their daughter Madeline was born. An only child, Maddy left home at the age of eighteen to study. She loves her parents dearly but only sees them when she absolutely has to. She recently qualified as a nurse and now works in a large hospital on the other side of town.
Last Tuesday morning, Janice, Maddy and more than six billion other people were struck down by the most virulent virus ever to blight the face of the planet. Most unexpectedly, Lester Prescott survived.
#
Day eight ends and day nine begins. What will this day bring? This last week has been harder than I could ever have imagined. None of it makes any sense. I’ve started coming here at night to Maddy’s room to try and understand. I sit on the end of her bed and remember how things used to be. The room is just as she left it when she went to university. Mother and I didn’t see any point changing anything until she’d got herself married and settled down in her own home. It’ll never happen now, of course. Our home is a little oasis of normality in a world gone completely mad.
The chain of events which began last Tuesday are as inexplicable today as when they first happened. It began like any other Tuesday at the offices of AJH. I arrived at work at ten to eight, got my desk ready and then started on my figures. Bill Ashcroft, the senior partner, was the first person I saw die. He was talking to his secretary Allison when it took him, and I then watched it work its way through the entire office, killing everyone, and I just sat there in the middle of it all, helpless and too afraid to move, waiting for my turn. I still don’t understand why I escaped, but before I knew it I was the only one left alive.
I left the office as quickly as I could, stopping only to put my papers away, lock my desk, pack my briefcase and fetch my newspaper and coat from the cloakroom.
The journey home was harrowing and painfully slow. Outside it was as if someone had simply flicked a switch: everyone seemed to have died at almost exactly the same moment. I saw hundreds of bodies, thousands even. It seemed to take forever to work my way back home through the chaos.
I had been thinking about Janice and Maddy constantly since leaving the office, and I’d hoped to return home to find Janice sitting there waiting for me. After all, I had survived, so why shouldn’t she have too? But it wasn’t to be. I found her in the kitchen, lying on her back on the floor in an inch of water. The tap had been left running and the room was awash. Dear Janice was soaked through. I set to work sorting things out straight away. I dried her off as best I could, then wrapped her in a blanket and covered her with black plastic refuse sacks which I taped up. It wasn’t an easy or pleasant task but I managed to get it done. It seemed a little undignified at the time, but I was acting in accordance with the instructions from the government anti-terror information booklet we received last summer. Janice often used to mock me because, by nature, I am occasionally pedantic and perhaps a little obsessive. She used to say that my attention to detail was infuriating, but thank goodness I am that way is all I can say. As a result of the filing system I use in my study I was able to find the booklet immediately and deal with my wife’s body quickly, humanely and hygienically, just as instructed.
As I worked to move Janice’s body and clean up the mess in the kitchen, I kept a constant eye out for Maddy. I felt sure she’d be home before long and I w
anted to make sure that Mother had been properly dealt with before she arrived. My mood darkened with every minute. As if losing my closest companion wasn’t enough, with each second that passed it appeared increasingly likely that my only child was gone too. Eventually, at half-past one that afternoon, I decided I couldn’t sit and wait any longer and so I set out to find her. I took my pedal bike from the garage, but once again my progress was frustratingly slow. I arrived at the hospital after an hour and ten minutes hard cycling, and immediately started to look for her. According to her timetable she should have been on duty but I couldn’t find her there. I had an awful time searching through the bodies on the ward for Maddy. So many poor, innocent people had lost their lives so suddenly and without explanation…
When I couldn’t find her in any of the areas I knew she covered, I worked my way back from the hospital to the house she shared with her friends Jenny and Suzanne. It was there that I found our little girl in her front yard, lying face down in the grass. Such a cruel, undignified end to such a beautiful young life. It broke my heart to see her like that. I packed her things, then used her car to bring her back home so I could deal with her body as I had Mother’s.
I read through the government booklet again that afternoon. It said that the bodies of the deceased should be buried away from the house. I dragged them both the length of the garden to the small area of lawn between the garden shed and Maddy’s old swing. We gave her that swing on her sixth birthday but Mother and I decided we’d keep it even after she’d grown up and stopped using it. It was always there to remind us of her. She used to have so much fun playing on it with her friends. Even now whenever I look at it I see young Maddy swinging in the summer sunshine. We’d hoped we’d have grandchildren to use it one day.
I unlocked the shed and went inside.
The garden shed has always been my escape. As well as being a very practical and convenient storage space, it was also a quiet little haven where I could sit and work or read my paper or listen to sport on the radio without interruption. Maddy and her mother liked their television and their soap operas but I couldn’t abide the constant noise. Quite often – almost daily in the summer months, certainly most weekends – I would shut myself away in the shed and relax in my own company with a cup of tea or a wee glass of something stronger.
Before I picked up my tools I sat down in my chair in the corner of the shed and tried to take stock of all that had happened. Sitting there it was hard to comprehend the enormity and finality of events and I could scarcely believe that my wife and daughter’s bodies lay just inches away. With tears in my eyes I looked around the little wooden hut and remembered all I had lost. On the wall opposite I stored the summer things that Maddy and her mother used to use; plastic patio furniture, sun-loungers and deck chairs, garden games and the like. In a small wooden box tucked away in one corner I found a collection of brightly coloured buckets and spades which I had again kept for those grandchildren we’d now never have. They reminded me of summer holidays long gone where Maddy, Mother and I would play on the beach in the blistering sun. Distant memories now…
With a heavy heart I stood, picked up my spade and the garden edging tool, and set to work. I took a rough measurement of the length and width of Maddy’s body (she was slightly taller and thicker set than her mother) and marked out the shape of the two graves in the turf close together. I carefully lifted the turf and then spent the next two hours digging before placing them both in their plots. Although we used to go to church most Sundays I wasn’t quite sure what I should say before I buried their bodies. It was difficult to think of the right words. I loved them both very much but I’ve always found it hard to properly express my feelings. Being gushing, emotional and romantic is something I’ve always struggled with, much to Janice’s chagrin. In any event I thanked God for their lives as I thought I should, and I asked that they would now find peace. I was confident they would, but I was less sure about what the future held in store for me.
I’m not the kind of man to sit there feeling sorry for himself. I wouldn’t have been doing anyone any favours if I’d done nothing. I spent a lot of time during the first two days of the crisis trying to understand what had happened, but I soon realised it was impossible. I read through the government booklet again but it was of little use. It kept talking about how the authorities would help and how I should wait for further instructions. I was ready to wait, but I was pretty certain that no instructions would ever be forthcoming. As far as I could tell (and I didn’t do anything to verify the validity of my supposition) I was the only man left alive.
I started to plan. It’s in my nature. I had plenty of food in the house, but I knew I needed more. I needed to be ready to fend for myself for a long, long time. With that in mind I took the car around to the shops and started to collect supplies: food, cleaning materials, clothing, bedding, medicines… even books, paper and pens. I had already realised how important it would be to keep myself occupied, both physically and mentally. I had written a comprehensive list of things I needed, several pages long, and I managed to get just about everything on it. It didn’t feel right taking goods without paying, but I had no means of making payment and no one to make payment to. I made a duplicate list – a ledger if you like – of what I’d taken and noted the cost of each individual item. When some semblance of normality finally returned, I decided, I would go back and settle my debts. The proprietors of the various shops I visited, if any had survived, would undoubtedly understand.
The third morning was as disorientating as the previous two. Just when I was beginning to get used to my situation, it changed again. On the third morning many of the bodies suddenly got back up onto their feet again. When I saw the first of them I hoped that was the end of it, that this was the first indication of an impending return to normality. It quickly became clear that was not going to be the case. The bodies which moved were uniformly unresponsive and slow. I stood out in the middle of the road in front of the house and stopped Judith Springer from number nineteen as she staggered past the end of the drive. I had known both Judith and her husband Roy for many years. She looked the same as always (save for a few unpleasant signs of deterioration) but she failed to react as a normal human being should. For goodness sake, she wasn’t even breathing!
I shut my door on the rest of the world again and went through to the back of the house. What about Maddy and her mother? Had their condition changed also? I found myself faced with the bizarre and repulsive, yet still very real possibility, that the wife and daughter I had buried two days earlier might now be trying to escape from their graves, digging their way back out through the dirt I’d shovelled over them. I crouched down next to the two slightly raised humps in the turf. There had been no change as far as I could see. I didn’t know what to do for the best. I lay there and put my ear to the ground and listened but I couldn’t hear anything and I couldn’t feel any movement. I reassured myself that not all of the bodies outside had moved. Had I just buried Maddy and her mother too deep for them to get out? In the terror of the moment I seriously contemplated exhuming their bodies, but what would that have achieved? What difference would it have made if they could move? Judith Springer was most certainly dead, despite the fact that she was somehow mobile again. I decided it was kinder both to Maddy and her mother to leave them both where they were and preserve what remained of their dignity.
I sat out in the garden shed again that afternoon and read a book and occasionally dozed. My sleep was punctuated with desperate dreams; twisted nightmares about my dead daughter and wife. It was almost dark when I woke and went back inside. The low light increased my unease. I regretted having slept and I tossed and turned all night in bed.
As the situation outside continued to change, I made a conscious effort to try and keep myself positive and motivated. I had left the car parked on the drive and had stored the provisions I’d collected at the far end of the garage. In fact, I had amassed such an impressive mountain of supplies that it
filled almost the entire length of the cold, rectangular room. On the morning of the fourth day I sat at my desk in the study and made a list of my daily dietary requirements. I used reference books, our family medical dictionary and an encyclopaedia to calculate the minimum I would need to eat each day to survive. I then spent the entire day in the garage, dividing the tins, boxes and bags of food into equal-sized daily allowances, making sure there were sufficient levels of the various vitamins, proteins and whatever other chemicals I needed for each day. I also allowed myself a daily luxury – a can of beer or a packet of sweets for example. It quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t be able to get quite everything I needed from my provisions. I decided I would have to look at fetching vitamin and mineral supplements when I next went out, if they proved necessary. During the day it also occurred to me that none of the food I had was fresh. Perhaps, I thought to myself, I could start trying to grow my own vegetables if my situation remained unchanged for any length of time. Janice and I had always maintained a small vegetable plot, but I would probably need to expand the operation over the coming year. Sitting there on the garage floor surrounded by packages of food rations, I found the idea of having to fend for myself on such a basic level strangely exciting.
I worked long and hard that day, and by eight o’clock when the light had begun to fade, I was finished. On the garage floor lay forty-three separate food parcels, one for each of the next forty-three days. I tried not to think of them as rations but that, in effect, was what they were. Talk of rationing made it sound like wartime, but it most certainly wasn’t. For me to have been at war I needed an enemy, and at that moment in time I was very definitely alone and unchallenged, despite the ghoulish creatures drifting along the streets outside in ever increasing numbers. I locked the side garage door, and let myself back into the house.
